Hypotheticals
by Rockbird
Summary: A bunch of one chapter 'what if' type things...
1. Derringer: She Who Lost The Battle

Notes:

This is the first in a set of hypothetical stories about various ER characters inspired by a ficklette challenge… These will contain spoilers to varying degrees… Some will be sad, some will be happy…

Disclaimers:

ER isn't mine.

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She held the small revolver, an antique derringer, she wasn't a gun aficionado, so it was a bit ridiculous that she had spent so much on the little antique pistol, but it was perfect, beautiful, and graceful, mother of pearl handles, and beautiful scrollwork all around the barrel and action and cylinder, even the trigger guard was ornate, so perfect.

She had thought at first that the money she was spending on the little gun was a waste, she would only use it once, but then again, she made good money, and she would never need any of it again.

Besides, a little grace, a little beauty in her final act was that too much to want, after a life that had been so cumbersome.

Reflecting on her life thus far, it really had been cumbersome, she'd never been the beautiful model type, and had always been clumsy, both physically and socially. Her love life hadn't been any better. A string of men, and then a woman, and none of it had worked out, and then there had been Sandy, then Henry, they had been the only things of grace and beauty that had seemed real, that would stay. And then they were both gone.

Sandy killed in a fire, and to add insult to injury, their son taken away. It was too much.

And after limping awkwardly on that damn crutch for so long, after loosing everything that mattered, having her wife and child ripped from her arms… a little grace wasn't too much to ask. That's why she'd chosen the pretty little derringer.

She'd thought of other ways at first, but this was the only way out that couldn't be screwed up, the only way to regain grace and dignity that had been lost. An overdose, she'd thought at first, she could write herself a prescription for something, maybe vicodin, or something more bizarre… glucophage, really, it could be anything. In reality, it didn't even need to be a prescription, if she wanted, it was possible to overdose on vitamins. Either way, it wouldn't be pleasant, she'd be found a mess, maybe found in pools of her own vomit, or maybe a crumpled heap where she'd finally collapsed as she had died with a restorative. Worse, being found alive, being resurrected, or maybe dying in spite of what they tried. Either way, stomach pumping and so much charcoal was a mess, and that's how she'd be remembered.

Wanting a pretty corpse, that'd ruled out hanging, which would leave ugly marks on her neck, and so many bruises, and, if she was strangled by the rope instead of having her neck snapped, her eyes would be bloodshot, and her face… she'd be found with such an unpleasant expression. It had also eliminated slitting her wrists (or her throat… or femoral artery for that matter) bleeding to death left a corpse looking so horrible, drained and she might not be found until she had begun to rot, meaning she'd be a rancid body on top of it. It'd also eliminated falling to her death and stepping in front of the L, both for obvious reasons.

How she'd be remembered, how her corpse looked, it was funny how much that mattered to her, probably because of all the pain, all the ugliness she'd experienced in life.

Morbid, she mused, how morbid that I'm so concerned with how my corpse appears., how I'm choosing this.

Morbid or not though, the derringer ensured perfection, no discoloration, no mess, and best of all, she could leave the crutch behind, and decide exactly how she'd be found. Odds were in favor of someone hearing the shot, she'd still be warm when they found her, and the only marring of her body would be a tiny bullet hole. Perfect. So perfect.

She tossed the crutch down from the top of the basement stairs and listened to it clatter as it bounced down each step, then laboriously made her way into her bedroom, and she sat on the bed, and she looked at the tiny gun, tracing the curling spirals that decorated it with her finger. She glanced over at the note sitting on her bed stand, written the night before.

_Should anyone care enough to grudge me for what I've done, for all of this… mess, simply know this was the best end I could have hoped for, to be with Sandy again, as I know I'll never be with my son. Should anyone care more than that, this is my doing and no one's fault, just the way the cards fell. The last day in court, that was the day that sealed this, the day I was told I would never hold him again, he would grow up without knowing his parents, and I would have to go on without him, but without him, and without Sandy, I cannot go on._

_Mark Greene once told me never to let my work become my life, but I did, and then came the woman who gave me my life back, Sandy. She forced me to see, and forced me to live, and so I no longer lived for work, but now the life she helped me build is gone, and after knowing the fulfillment of living, I cannot be satisfied solely by work._

_In closing, I will simply say that I wish on all of you lives far better than the one I have lived, that when you find happiness, it is not taken from you, and I apologize for all the insensitivity I have shown you, as it has been the only way I have ever known to get anything done. _

_Kerry_

She thought for a brief moment of rewriting it, but there were some things that couldn't be put into words, and others that shouldn't. It wouldn't do to leave them a novella instead of a note. She'd signed it as simply Kerry for no reason other than that she felt undeserving of her title if she couldn't even help herself, and including her last name was so… stiff…

She thought back to the little gun in her palm and its placement, trying to decide where the shot would be best placed. Eating the bullet was an option, but when found, she would have no graceful pose…

It was then that she realized if no one heard the shot, her death wouldn't be noticed until she didn't come into work. It was pathetic really, she had no close friends to speak of, and now, no family. Only co-workers that hated her, or, at best, couldn't care less either way…

Who's kidding who now? There was no 'at best,' they hated her, from the beginning, they'd hated her. She knew it for a fact. She remembered back to her arrival at county… Doug's mocking in the lounge, not realizing that she had heard every word.… she wasn't supposed to hear it… it was just innocent fun… but it had been so humiliating… she couldn't just turn back… it'd have been an admission of some sort… so she had strode into the room just to hang up the phone…

…

…

… and then there'd been that damn cake. They'd left it in the fridge, how could she not find it. Surely every last one of them had assumed she would somehow never notice… but she had… how can one person make herself so hated after only a few days?

All the more reason to end it now.

'My greatest talent…' she mused out loud, 'it's my greatest curse… No one likes a woman in charge.'

Being hated at work was something she could deal with on her own once upon a time, when she was used to handling everything on her own, from the death of her parents to a divorce she never spoke of, there was a time she had thought it easier to simply not say a word.

Then she had been with someone who cared enough to make her open up a bit, and she became accustomed to going from the conflict of work to the sanctuary of home, her beloved wife, and eventually their perfect son.

When something is right, but then is somehow made wrong, things can never go back to the way they were before, because the memory is there, the memory of a time when things didn't hurt, not like this. When walls are torn down, they are harder to rebuild.

When things are right, but are then made wrong, there is a storm.

A flash of lightning and a roar of thunder, and that was the storm.

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Please Review

Others to come


	2. Angel: She Who Survived

ER isn't mine. None of its characters or plots are mine. This story however, is mine.

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She walked into the ER, her first day back after the stabbing, she had to finish that rotation, and that aside, she had to face her fears. Her hair had been cropped short and dyed a chocolate brown- she considered it her symbolic way of moving on, getting over what had happened. She knew she would never be the same Lucy again, that through no fault of her own, she would never hold the same truths in her heart or feel the same loves and hates. She was Lucy Knight, but a different Lucy Knight, harder around the edges, maybe a bit tougher, and generally a hell of a lot more jaded.

She was dressed more professionally now, wearing black trousers and a matching blazer over a turquoise turtle neck shirt- she wore a lot of turtlenecks now, and a lot of scarves, what she would do when the heat of July and August rolled around, she did not know, but there was an undeniable urge to keep her neck covered, to hide the scars. Maybe it would pass, she kept telling herself that, as the scars faded from pink to white, she would stop caring about them. Everything would be normal, for that matter, when the scars faded. She wouldn't be afraid, she wouldn't remember. Or she would remember but simply not care.

She went through the motions for most of the day, treating the patients she could, pestering an attending or resident for those she could not. She didn't have that computer anymore, it didn't seem relevant. She'd thrown it out, spent her many weeks in bed studying. Nothing else, no novels, no visiting on the phone with old friends from school, just studying.

She stepped out of the hall and into the lounge, planning on a cup of coffee.

And then she saw him, John Carter, the other survivor, for the first time since the attack, and for some inexplicable reason, she wanted to hurt him. Somehow it was his fault. Somehow, in her mind, hurting him would make it all go away. She bit her lip, hard, resisting the impulse to do him harm, and realizing she was afraid not just of what had happened, but of what she had become. She put on a mask-a smiling mask.

"Lucy, it's good to see you again," He was unsure of what to say, but then again, what do you say to someone after you've been through something like that together, and then not said a word to one another since.

"Dr. Carter," She nodded, then walked past him, reminding herself it was a madman, not Carter's unwillingness to believe that Paul Sobriki was indeed a mad man, that had caused all her pain. He too had suffered. It was just hard to believe, hard to stomach. She needed someone to blame, someone more concrete than a man miles away in a mental institution.

"You look well," he didn't want to give up that easily.

"Yeah, you too. I've got to go. Patients to see."

He stared sadly at her as she walked away, barely recognizing her, with the new look, and the new demeanor. She wasn't the cute little med student anymore. She was still a med student, and somehow she seemed even smaller, but she defiantly wasn't cute anymore.

After a few simmilar brushes with various members of the staff, Lucy found herself sitting on the roof in the cool, now evening, air. She stared out across the lights of the city, and at the last bits of color that still held vainly to the horizon. She felt like the sky, with just traces of light left inside among the inky dark. As she ran a finger absentmindedly over the scar on her neck, she mumbled to herself, "If it all still hurts this much when this scar is faded white..." Lucy stood and walked to the edge of the roof and stared at the ground, "it'll be time to fly. I don't think I was meant to make it. It will be time to fly, fly like an angel."


	3. Dishonored: She Who Erred

The little amber bottle was almost magical. Somehow, the fluid inside it was captivating to swish around, watch the ripples and bubbles. She knew exactly what it could do. Exactly what it would do to her. It was almost fair to say that Elizabeth Corday was in love with that little bottle.

What the hell had she been thinking, staying by redoing her internship? She couldn't hack it the second time through, and a patient had died for it. A man was dead because she misplaced a decimal point.

She could've accepted his offer. If she'd gone on that date, just ignored how revolting a creature Romano truly was. Forget the tall dark and handsome in favor of short, bald, and holding her career in his greasy claws, none of this would've gone wrong.

That would have been so easy, in retrospect.

She had ended her career and a man was dead. And she was going back to England. Couldn't hack it.

What the hell had she been thinking? Surgery was for men. Her grandfather and father and the son that her father should have had. And she hadn't made the grade. She had proved that women might not be right for it.

Single-handedly, Elizabeth decided, she had completely undone years of feminism and fighting, and attempts at smashing through the glass roof.

Poetic then, that as punishment, she would die the way her patient had. A simple overdose. Only his was a mistake. Oh well. It was right. Nothing would fix the mistakes she had made.

What else was there for her? Go back to Europe, tail between her legs? She wouldn't be operating again any time soon. Stripped of her medical degree, dishonored, shamed.

So she'd gone back in to collect her things from her office, and stopped off to say goodbye to a few people who would still speak to her. And Peter wasn't one of them. But Kit gave her the bottle and the syringe when she requested them. No questions asked. Elizabeth hoped that Kit wouldn't be punished for it.

There she sat in the lavatory of a 747 flying over the Atlantic, wondering how she'd gotten where she was and how she'd smuggled the hypodermic needle and bottle of magnesium... Or was it potassium... How she'd gotten them in on her carryon bag. No one would be able to get to her until it was well past too late.

She wondered what the sky looked like out the windows of the plane. When she'd flown to the states, it'd been on a night flight, and everything had been black. What was it like now?

She wondered if it would be a flight attendant who found her. Would it be before they landed?


End file.
